This week Bill Rice and Mike Carroll talk about designing for the real world--a distracted one. When you design are you using a blank, uncluttered canvas or are you designing as one of a half-dozen other browser tabs and applications running on the desktop? We’re going to tell you why you should consider that latter.

Speaker 1:

0:00

Welcome to make the logo bigger. We're a strategy first company, right? So as everyone should be, I mean, you got to start with your objective and then kind of work your way backwards from there. The podcast that takes you behind the scenes of a marketing agency, content is getting so much more expensive. It just got to figure out more economical ways to provide that service to clients. Come to guys that get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis. People love behind the scenes type stuff. They want to see how you work. You know they want to know more about your process, so be open and honest. Here's your host though, Rice. Usually the best ideas don't actually sit within where you are. They're usually come from somewhere else, and Mike, Carol, you need to design first and then create content to the design, and now the obligatory legal disclosure.:

Speaker 1:

0:41

Bill Rice and Mike Carol worked for Kalydeco. Hey, marketing and design agency, all opinions expressed by bill and Mike are definitely the opinions of Kalydeco opinions expressed by guests of this podcast. Well, they could be right or wrong. Who knows, this podcast is for informational purposes and has a reasonable probability of making your marketing better. And now this week's episode, welcome to episode three of make the logo bigger. We're designing for distractions today, which is a super cool, a topic that I'm looking forward to talking about. And we actually got the inspiration from this from an article that I read and it was a totally sort of different take on things, but the way we all should be thinking about how we do design and the context in which we do, but before we:

Speaker 2:

1:30

and did that, um, since we're kind getting to know each other. Uh, right now, uh, you guys know, knowing us. Uh, again, my name is bill rice and Mike Carroll's with me here from Kalydeco. I wanted to talk a little bit about the podcast itself. Like why did we decide to start doing this? Like a, what are we hoping to gain out of this? Because this whole, this whole exercise is meant to be a really transparent inside a reflection of a kind of working at and with a marketing agency. So Mike, you want to lead a little bit with at least your thoughts on why we're doing this podcast and what we're hoping to gain from it will be transparent with people.:

Speaker 3:

2:04

Yeah. I think at the, you know, for you and I, I'm like at the most intimate and I don't want to say intimate. It's at the most personal level. I've always been looking for a better way. We have conversations like this all the time. We enjoy our conversations is one of the reasons we work together by the way, like just, you know, enjoying brainstorming and talking about issues no matter what they are. And so I think initially like we just wanted an easier way for us to express the things that we talk about to other people on this podcast format. I don't know why it alluded us, um, is the best way to do that. Um, the second thing, you know, the business objective here, because there's all, you know, there is a business objective is we try to transition or you know, focus a little bit more of Kalydeco is attention on being an agency for agencies where we had some great success. Um, you know, basically creating development department that works with individual agencies. It's a way for us to, you know, to be thought leaders in our space and for us to attract, you know, hopefully:

Speaker 2:

3:00

a new leads. I mean, if for nothing, Bro, the reason, I mean, um, so those are the two things I think is what, you know, put us down this path is the easy way to create content. Um, so that we can get it out into the world. Um, but also, you know, on a personal level we want to share our thoughts and ideas with, uh, with as many people as possible. And not to sound arrogant, but some of them, some of them or at least pretty good. Totally. Totally. Yeah. I think that's always kind of interesting because at the end of the day, you know, you choose an agency or you work with an agency, and this probably applies in a lot of different business settings, but you ultimately, I mean obviously there are some unique advantages or disciplines or qualifications that we have or whatever, but at the end of the day you tend to pick your providers and the people that you work with because you like, um, and this format really gives us whenever we're doing a pitch or somebody arrives to us on the website and then puts in a lead or makes a request for a project or whatever it kicks off this really sort of stilted process of, of us kind of interacting with each other.:

Speaker 2:

4:00

And I'm meeting, if you will, to, to figure out how we're going to court each other and that kind of stuff. And you don't really get a good sense of like who you're working with and what it's going to be like. Where is this, this podcast format. You could sit here and in a sort of a 40 year old stick way, um, just, you know, listen to us for 10 episodes and figuring out like how am I going to enjoy working with bill and Mike, do I think they have anything to add to my organization? And so it's, I think it's just a really good way, uh, for, for prospective clients or even existing clients to, to kind of get in and get more from us than what they can just get by paying for an engagement or they can get through a pitch or proposal session.:

Speaker 2:

4:43

And so it's really meant to just, uh, it was just really open up the inside of the agency so that you can really kind of test run us before you even have to pay us a cent. So, and then hopefully, like I said, there's, there's some value here for those people that just quite honestly can't afford what we offer and trying to gut it out or figure it out on their own to start, which was just how all startups work. So that's our hope. Um, but, uh, yeah, lead generation is always a good thing too. So if you're interested in working with us, [inaudible] dot com, this pitch. There we go. All right, so let's get right into the kind of the main segment and designing for distraction. So just to give you a little bit of a background and then we'll kind of talk through this better.:

Speaker 2:

5:27

I'm Zach Johnston, who best I could read as a systems designer, uh, for dropbox and builds their applications and designs and some of their user experiences and interfaces. Wrote this incredible article on medium, uh, where he was talking about how he's altered his design process and I'm sure all the designers out there can kind of relate to this, but most of you, most of us design on kind of a white, stark, blank page sort of background. Um, but particularly when we're talking about websites or any sort of software applications, even iphone apps and those sorts of things. Um, that's not the way the users experiencing your software. They're experiencing your software in a very noisy, distracted environment there, you know, other windows up, other tabs up, there are other applications running on their phone. And so he realized that he needed to adjust his process to actually incorporate those distractions, uh, as, as background and context in the designs that he's making, which is kind of like, I mean, it just never really struck me. I mean, I haven't.:

Speaker 4:

6:44

No, no. I mean, I was going to say to you, this is one of these topics that like, you know, when you sent the article to me and I looked at it, I'd never thought about it like that. I really never thought about the frame of website outside of the context of the browser itself. Sure. It needs to be mobile responsive and all of these things. And, and I think about distraction and in, in the sense of like a, you know, content streams. So we always talk about when talking about social or even Google or whatever else has a, how to stand out and those types of streams. But I never ever considered the, the external world of your computer and how you're kind of interacting with it. And now that you've mentioned this like, well I work with two monitors, right? I've got so many things going at once that you know, this was a problem all the time.:

Speaker 4:

7:25

Sometimes I lose applications or things that I'm working on a little tiny windows and this and that because they just kind of blend into the background and then I don't use them as much. I mean it was really fascinating way for someone to think about it and you know, just just goes to show you that the, you know, the Nissan Center, you know, the way that people address design is often slightly more complicated than you give them credit for. Because I'm not a huge fan of dropbox by the way. Like as a, as a piece of software. Like I can't stand it. But this gentleman, this gentleman, you know, the way he approached his design is really, really interesting. And maybe that's going to improve the way we do it. But it also kind of brings into the detail of how we do sorts of things. So I want to talk about that and kind of brainstorm a little bit and think like how we would do things a little bit differently.:

Speaker 4:

8:08

Assuming that there are distractions. I think one that I know that, that, uh, I interact with constantly is a lots of tabs open. And so if I'm a website, like those, those minute details of like what does that fave icon look like? Yeah. How clear is it? Like what's going on in the, uh, in the little title of the Tab. Should it be shorter? Should it be longer, should it be dynamic? What can I do? Like what are in this I don't even know, like what are the possibilities and the different browsers to maybe animate something or, or make it like highlight it yellow. I was just thinking like I'd want the whole thing highlighted yellow. It'd be the only tab that was a different color than the rest of your tabs. And we probably can't manipulate the browser itself, but you might maybe highlight the text, goes in your favorite con and like that would be a really simple way to kind of make your, your that tab stand out and remind someone that they're coming back to look at that.:

Speaker 4:

9:01

Totally. And I know that another one that's a that I, I've kind of run into a lot of frustration with is like you said, using multiple monitors or even using a large screen and maybe I'm working on two things at the same time or doing some research and I've got one a browser kind of popped out from the other one and I'm condensing it down. And depending on the website, some of those, you know, if I, if I streamlined it down and it's not actually at a break point, it does all kinds of really strange, bizarre things and makes it unusable. And so then I got to stretch it out longer than I or wider than I want it to be. And you know, things like that and sort of trying to make your website a. particularly if you've got content or something that's going to be researched or referenced, uh, to make that really usable and all kinds of different widths and stretches and that sort of thing.:

Speaker 4:

9:49

So yeah, you know, what I think about actually, you know, when you were doing, you're just saying that. So for dropbox it's really interesting that he would necessarily care about it. I might even make the argument that for his piece of software it's not, it wouldn't create a problem by the way if you're think blended into the background because like dropbox is probably a thing if someone's using it that they have to use. I mean it's a, it's a file organization system in the cloud, right? So if you're looking for something, you're going to go ahead and use dropbox, do I forget to use it. But if you put this in the context of, you know, just like you were saying like a marketing website or, or a piece of content or something like that. I know what I am doing research throughout the day or all that kind of stuff that, you know, like you said you've got nine, 10, 15, 22.:

Speaker 4:

10:31

There's a, there's a young lady at our agency, by the way, we always make fun of her. She has literally 100 tabs open at all times. Sometimes. I asked her, I'm like, well, how do you even pay attention to what you're doing? And she's like, I don't, it's impossible. Um, but the, but my point is, is that like, you know, throughout your day you're like, oh, I want to read that article. I want to do it later. But then when you start to close down your day and you closed down your browser, as I started to go through each particular tab and see it in the noise of like my desktop, if it's not compelling to look at, like even the design of the headline, I just close it down. I'm like, well, if you didn't read it already, you know, it wasn't important enough to remember.:

Speaker 4:

11:05

Anyway. Um, and so if you want to cut through the noise for a marketing perspective and thinking about your design in that context I think is a really clever way, uh, to, to capture the leaving visitor, to make sure that you garner their attention just one last time to give yourself the opportunity, uh, to get them to scroll down the page to engage your content or what I've figured out how to get them to see this too, like are like, ah, I really don't want to shut that down. But, but then there's no real easy way. There's some clipping services and that kind of stuff and they've kind of played with those, but there's no real easy way to, to, uh, like you said, clip it or bookmark it or hold onto it without sort of an extra layer of, of effort or tool or application or you won't even remember. Right? So, just as an anecdotal thing, I use bookmarks all the time and, and when I, when I look at my bookmark, I've got ones:

Speaker 3:

11:54

for clients that I'm doing research on. I've got, you know, uh, you know, other, other stuff. It just tons of stuff and about a week and a half ago, I literally spent three hours going through all of my old bookmarks. I mean, it took that long to reorganize them. And guess what I've seen, I kept maybe one 50th of what I, what I actually bookmark, right? Because it had gone on for so long that like 90 percent of it wasn't even relevant to me anymore or I figured out the problem in a different way. And so yeah, I agree. The clipping service isn't bookmarks. It doesn't work. If you think someone they'll bookmark by site and they'll come back to it. The answer that question is no, they will know:

Speaker 2:

12:30

and not to kind of like dive too much into um, you know, dropbox is as an application or so that environment. But I think one thing particularly for web designers and developers that we have to increasingly think about, um, and, and this is happening actually, I think a little bit is driven by Google and Google apps and Google drive. Um, and sort of their attempt on the chromebook side to make the operating system the internet or the browser, um, and it's, it's forced people like dropbox and box to kind of come to them and when I'm talking about here is a, so you have group Google apps which everybody's familiar with. You've got obviously your male, you've got your docs and sheets and presentations and that kind of stuff. But there is this, uh, and I think this is what they're dealing with. There was also this notion of a drive or a storage capacity back there.:

Speaker 2:

13:26

And, and traditionally what we've done is we've had standalone applications that run on our desktop and then we have storage that, that physically sits in our computer and those things work fairly close with each other and almost in a, in a seamless, I'm unaware sort of way, right? We save something, it saves into the storage or the or the disc drive or whatever. We don't really think about that because everything has access to everything. Once we're on the computer browser, there's a different thing going on, right? We don't have access to the computer itself, right? Were, were contained just to the nature of the security of browsers. They don't have access to your physical computer. So now they've started to put this notion of, of kind of a cloud drive out there, which they do have access to and that's facilitated something. But at the end of the day, a lot of things that we want in our storage systems still reside on our computer.:

Speaker 2:

14:19

So now they have this extra thing which dropbox kind of squared the market there early. That drive has kind of gotten into it. So now you have this sinking thing going on with dropbox and drive and what we've created, and I wrestle with this all the time. You've got now these, this, this cognitive distance between working on documents in your browser, um, and potentially saving the mountain to a drive and then having stuff on your, your, your actual hard drive in your computer that you also want saved in there so you can get to it wherever, because:

Speaker 4:

14:52

that's really convenient factor. And so um, Dr started here, they started with the apps and then they added on the storage and these guys dropbox and box I think are trying to catch up because they're like, oh crap, like we were storing all this stuff but now all that stuff, the, that are being stored in this actually exist in these web based apps, not in these, you know, not Microsoft word documents and stuff. And even Microsoft word documents are actually becoming in browser sort of application. So anyway, that's, that's what I think they're trying to figure out because you're, you're actually using the dropbox APP now. Like they have notes and all kinds of stuff like that. They're adding the apps on the front sir. But Bro don't you think it's like the, you know, it's like the marketing automation platforms syndrome, right? Or, or the crm, you know, expansion software syndrome in the sense that like what I think dropbox and maybe even share file or whatever else is going to try and do, which is trying to replicate what, what Google docs even specifically as done, which is like cloud collaboration in a, you know, an actual document is that you're going to have all these platforms by the way that do one thing really well and then a whole bunch of other things like in a really crappy way.:

Speaker 4:

16:02

So, so, so Kalydeco, we're uh, we're always advocates of the tech stack, right? Like find a piece of software that does the one thing you needed to do really, really well and then find another piece and then connect them together and the way that or works or you know, even development these days like that is connecting devices or I mean pieces of software together as imminently solvable. So that never really a problem if it's a good piece of software. So I'm worried that these companies, like I like share file and, and you know, even box or whatever else is because it is what it is. It's a giant filing cabinet and I used to kind of remain that way. If they were going to do anything, I think they would make it easier for you to, you know, to integrate with something like Google drive where you could like click a button that says, oh, save this for all of time in traffic, you know, and that it would.:

Speaker 4:

16:45

And then in archives it's an archive. It's not an active thing that you need to be in. It's, it's the, you know, excuse my language, it's the. Oh Shit. I hope I didn't lose that moment. That's totally. It's funny. I'm going to wrap this up a little bit. That's kind of funny that you say that is like, I can't tell you the number of times I'm working on somebody else's computer or using something like word or whatever and I forget to save because there's just an inherent assumption now that everything is automatically saved. Like I can't even imagine what I would lose on a, on a pc just because I don't understand, you know, intentionally staging anymore. So the other thing I want to talk about in this before we leave this topic, because I think again in web design, it's something that we never think about but we probably should think about more often. Um, and Zach touched on this too, is designing for time. So what is the most likely scenario of what distractions, noise application or things they may be doing or using before they encounter my design and what:

Speaker 2:

17:50

might they do afterward either as a result of what I'm doing with them in my design or I want them to do and really kind of designing sort of those, those time differential. So like for instance, um, and this is a pretty, pretty typical one. Maybe you're doing something like, um, let's see. I'm trying to think of a good example. Let's just take a mortgage for example. So maybe I'm doing a whole bunch of research, right? I want to figure out like what the interest rates or whatever and then I'm actually coming somewhere to maybe apply or maybe get more information or whatever. And then I do that and then what will I go and do next while I go to my email, I go to my phone, that kind of stuff. And really trying to think about like the beginning and then any like medium would be another good one is like I'm going to write an article, like what?:

Speaker 2:

18:37

What might I be doing before? Well I'm probably going to do some research or what am I going to do next? And they actually did. I don't know, I didn't think of this example a first, but they did a perfect example of this. So medium is a writing environment, right? So you blogged there, you write up an article or whatever. Then what's the next thing that you do before you hit publish, right? You go when you find a featured image, well before you went out to unsplash obviously, because that's who they use to figure out how to get a free image. And then you download that and then you stick it in the medium. And what they've just recently done is now all you do is you go up and you say, Hey, I want to add an image, and they gave you a search bar and you search unsplash and you click the one you want and it's right there. Right? So somebody at medium thought, okay, whenever they write an article, what's the next thing they're gonna do and how can I facilitate that? And that is to go find a feature image. So that's a perfect example of designing for distraction. So, um, anyway, that's how, that was another sort of really cool part of what he highlighted that we should be doing more of his web designers.:

Speaker 4:

19:41

It's to be honest with you, you know, when that particular concept, uh, I don't want to say blew my mind, but I don't even know how to fit that into my way of thinking right now. Like that's a thought exercise that, you know, that as a different degree of difficulty. I will, I will say that for, you know, for when you're trying to design a website like a good old fashion, uh, a website. Because the medium example is, I used it today actually, and I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, I don't have to go anywhere. It was, it was very relaxing. Uh, and uh, you know, I'd say it probably saved me, you know, 15, 20 minutes. I'll tell you another one, and we probably just did this as dumb luck, but, uh, another one:

Speaker 2:

20:14

we actually solve this problem a little bit is, so we had, um, a, a mortgage site and one of the things that we kind of thought, well, what will people do before they'll, they'll maybe decide to refinance their mortgage or maybe get a mortgage and oftentimes that's going and actually paying their mortgage and having some understanding of what their current rate is versus what the current rates that their pain is versus what the current rate and the market is. And oftentimes there's huge disparities there because people just get comfortable with their payment and there's a long period of time in between there and they don't realize like all the sudden mortgage rates got a whole lot lower or got a whole lot higher. Um, and so what we did there is we actually use some data sources to help make it easier for them to see the difference between, as they go to pay the difference between whatever rate they've discovered their versus the current rates. Um, and then hopefully generate a lead out of that so the person gets a better rate. But um, so that's another thing of just like figuring out like the before and after of our interaction. So, um, but yeah, super, super cool smart guy. I'm like I said, even when I was doing some research for this podcast, I really didn't find anybody else talking about that, but like everybody should be talking about that because we live in a world full of noise and distraction. Now. It's like it's becoming infinitely more important.:

Speaker 1:

21:38

Uh, it's becoming, you know, I don't know, maddening almost that. Well, yeah, that's why I think like the second component of this is like everybody's, everybody's trying to figure out how to do focus. And I think a couple of weeks ago I suggested the deep work book, we're all like trying to quest after like how can we simplify some of that because it is becoming a little overwhelming. So you're listening to collide. Make the logo bigger podcast. You can find us on the web at [inaudible] dot com. K A L I C O.com. Now back to the show. Alright, let's fly into biggest challenges a rabbit hole of the week. And so I'll take this one first.:

Speaker 2:

22:23

Cool. Um, I'm going to go back to the mortgage example again, maybe because it's a client we're working on right now that makes this a, all my examples today. But, uh, one thing that I'm finding in working with this, this client is that a surprisingly customers want to do more of the work in one particular part that we discovered this week is the loan application. And so what this client said is, Hey, what I'm getting over and over again as I'm having a conversation with a potential client, either referral or even an Internet lead. Um, and then when I have the conversation with them initially, they don't want to sit there and talk to me. They don't want to give me the information we put in the application. There could be a lot of reasons for this. Maybe there's some anxiety over the sales process. Maybe they're just a little, you know, sometimes people are embarrassed or, or I'm hesitant to give out their financial information.:

Speaker 2:

23:18

And so the requests he was getting over and over again. It's like, Hey, can you send me a link so I can fill out the application? Um, and so I think as we, as we design websites and we designed user experiences, I think increasingly because people are just getting so used to filling out web web forms and getting so good and efficient at it that they actually want to do with themselves. And so that's what we're working on doing for them is literally creating, you know, a full on application and it's great for the salesperson in particular because they, they walk in in the morning and they got a, you know, a full application already filled out. And, and I think there is a kind of a win win situation, uh, if we get more and more of this and it works is because that a loan officer or mortgage broker and this is in the context of other industries, whoever that person is can focus more on the consultation part of the process and less on the sales and, and, and that kind of process, which creates anxiety for both people and then the actual customer gets a better experience because they're just getting the consultation, they're not getting the hey I need this, I need this, I need this, I need to pressure you or push you to get all the information I need out of you so that I can even help you.:

Speaker 2:

24:29

And in this particular case, the customer does that and it kind of more comfortable way. So. So the, the big theme customers literally wanting to do more of the work for themselves on the web before they actually engage you for an interaction.:

Speaker 3:

24:44

Do you think that's because they are. I mean, I think it's a multitude of reasons, right? But the, the other thing that comes to mind is because they're really trying to limit their interaction with a live person.:

Speaker 2:

24:54

Totally. Totally. Actually another person that you know, in our company that I was talking to, I was like, what, what do you think that is happening? That. And then she was even using kind of herself as an example. She's like, the last thing I want to do is get on a phone call that I don't have control of how long it's going to last. So I'd rather go to the website, fill in all the information and then I'm in control of how long that part of the process takes. So I think it's a control issue for sure. Yeah, it makes sense to me in phone conversations are horribly inefficient. That's why kids text message, they don't talk on the phone anymore. Efficient. Yeah.:

Speaker 3:

25:29

Well we do. We did a lot of work for mortgage companies that have you guys figured out a way. So the biggest challenge by the, with the online APP, because we've built a couple of them right? For, for a handful of clients and it's worked differently for different brokers, you know, that we've worked with, um, have you guys cracked the code on how to turn that, you know, that 10, oh, three. Essentially that application into something digital that can be translated into the, you know, to the loan origination system or are they still have an editor that in by hand?:

Speaker 2:

25:54

Um, yeah. So, uh, so this is kind of interesting and I don't want to go too much down this, but we'll, we'll touch on it just a tiny bit because it is just like deepen in, into the mortgage industry. But, um, and, and people may or may not be familiar with this, but quicken loans came out with her and they'd been working on this for years, but the rocket loans pro product in what has happened is it's rapidly accelerated all of the technology, the fin tech people, uh, to accelerate. I'm doing this and quicken loans almost by being kind of the first in the market to do it has given everybody permission, uh, to, to do what needed to be done to that, make that process a work. Um, and so, so it's just like you were talking about before when you were talking about Zapier, essentially what these guys are doing is they're putting together these apps and then they're literally using apis and plugging these things in along and so recreating that experience.:

Speaker 2:

26:48

Um, and then at the end of that, um, depending on who you are, yeah, it's converting that 10, oh, three and two, the three point two file. And there's now there's multiple providers that are doing that. So that, that's actually a really hard translation. It's a Fannie Mae for that. Um, and it's literally like archaic, um, sort of data file format, but they're doing all that work with us. Yeah, exactly. Government. But uh, but yeah, so that's kind of a really exciting space. All kinds of cool things with fin tech and some big, big quicken loans just became the largest mortgage lender. Um, and so as a result of that, uh, they can plow through a lot of things that were holding back some technology innovation just because there's such a big 800 pound gorilla in the market. Once they give it permission, it accelerates things quickly. So that's a benefit.:

Speaker 3:

27:40

Yeah. All our listeners should know that we're, we're kind of, I will say we're kind of fin tech nerds. It's one of our favorite spaces. We have a lot of clients, a lot of clients in that space also. I like a lot and I know we're running short on time and we liked the fintech space because of all the spaces on the Internet of all the digital things and software that people are developing. You know, Fintech has to me the most potential to change the way that you live in manage like your life for the better. And it's just getting to a point now where things making things really interesting where parts of your financial life, the parts that almost matter the most, that you want to deal with, the least are finally becoming fun and easy. That that's totally, totally. All right. What else do you, here's my rabbit hole, super, super short by the way.:

Speaker 3:

28:21

So this is a piece of advice to anybody that engages an agency anywhere, no matter what kind of company you are, no matter how deep you are with your agency, if it's like a $20,000 a month engagement or a a $1,500, helping you manage your social media thing, getting strategy approved so that your agency knows what you want them to do and that you've agreed upon approaching your marketing from a strategic perspective. And this manager is like the most critical thing. So I have a handful of clients right now and I love them all. I'm, I'm just waiting on the strategy to be approved and I think that the message to, to folks as a, the digital universe is like, it's very ephemeral. So in other words, it just, it doesn't last very long. So digital marketing strategy is going to change from month to month to month anyways, so don't spend so much time worrying about like your overarching strategy. If it seems to make sense, you're going to test it and you're going to see if it works and the data is going to tell you what to do next. Go ahead and do that. So my rabbit hole this week is actually just getting people to, uh, escape the paralysis of analysis and let us do our thing. So if you hire someone, they hire an expert to do something, let them.:

Speaker 2:

29:29

That's a great segue into like the hottest trending marketing topics of the week. I'm totally related, uh, and that, uh, for from me is, and I think it's because one of the reasons strategy is take so long to get it approved. This, there's just so much data that can be consumed, um, and it can literally cripple you and it can cripple campaigns. It can cripple overall strategies. It can actually. We worked with the business that almost killed the business because they were so deep in the weeds and the data that they couldn't make a move because they were, they were so concerned about like incremental revenue, um, that they weren't looking at the big picture. Um, and so that just the crippling impact of data and then I pull out the quote from sandlot because it seems to encompass that you're killing me smalls, right? It's the little tiny details that are not important that, that, that, you know, just keep, they keep coming back to and they keep hitting you with and they keep becoming consumed themselves with that. It just bogs down the whole process. So data is great. Um, and being able to dig in there and figure out what's going on and figure out how to make some incremental improvements are great that you've got to make sure that you're doing the big basic foundational stuff in a good way. Um, and you don't get so dragged down in the weeds that you just stopped moving. Right? So yeah,:

Speaker 3:

30:46

we call them Disney world numbers, right? It's my favorite story of all time and I can't remember his name, but he's the guy that runs the Disney theme parks and he was doing an interview with somebody and they said, uh, you know, I said, what are you guys, how do you know if you know the park? Like what data did you use if the park is doing well? And he's like, oh, I only need three numbers every day and the reporter was rather shocked or whatever. But the three numbers you needed was a, what did he say? He said gate gate attendant. So like how many people actually came through the gates of gate revenue, a concession revenue and then wait times in lines with the next car and hand it to him every morning. Right. Or something like that. So it's just amazing. Yeah, something like that. And it's like, oh, I feel good about yesterday. Totally.:

Speaker 2:

31:22

Totally. All right. What's your, what, what's a kind of:

Speaker 3:

31:26

very creepy, a sort of evolution of ai or artificial intelligence? Live chat. So in an ever increasing effort for everyone to not have to do anything ever. Uh, you know, the, the new trend is ai driven website chat for marketers. So it's the, and by the way don't necessarily oppose this, but like the idea behind it of course is the sales automation tool. It's so that you could automate the beginning of conversations to weed out the ones that aren't necessarily worthwhile. And keep your sales team kind of focused on the ones that have the most value or most potential to close a however, I will say it's got the potential to really. The technology is not really there yet, so it's got real potential like turn off your customers in a super negative way because it says exactly what you think it says to someone, which is like, I don't think you're worth the time to talk to.:

Speaker 2:

32:15

Bots are becoming a huge, huge trend. I actually, it's kind of funny. We tested one of these with a um, uh, facebook's giving you the ability to do messenger campaigns now, uh, and I get some really interesting reactions out of this particular campaign is because, you know, it showed him something and it said, hey, why don't you send me a message or ask me a question or whatever. Um, and, and I don't know exactly. I mean, I've seen it so I don't know, but it happened frequently enough that there, there is something that must be the slightest bit confusing. I didn't find it confusing, but now we got a bunch of people that actually hit that to ask a question and then the, the way we set it up as the chat Bot would give them an immediate reply, kind of flushing out what the question was or sort of have a welcome or a greeting to it or whatever. And a lot of people were going to take me off your list, like stop talking to me. Like they didn't, they didn't mean to engage them. And so it all, all of a sudden turned into like spam and I was like, I don't understand this because you engaged me. Like, how could you have this, you know,:

Speaker 3:

33:17

I don't think they're ready for the messenger part. So we said we've had good success with like the, you know, facebook ads by the way, when there's a different topic for a different time because we're running out of time today. But facebook has now added, I think it's 13 different ad types essentially. And one of them is driving people to Messenger actually start a conversation. We've had some really good success, um, you know, creating leads that way. It's an actual live conversation with a live person if they're really interested in, for some reason they seem to trust the facebook platform is like a, you know, a locked box like a, you know, an appropriate place to have that type of conversation, whether it's about finance or anything else. But I think you're right, I think sometimes people are clicking on ads like that and they don't even expect to get the messenger thing and then it, they walk away and then it pops back up and then they think that you're spying on them or something, which again is back to my original point is that ai and when it comes to live chat and these instance has the, you know, people aren't ready for it yet.:

Speaker 3:

34:07

They're not ready to receive that type of communication. It's got the real potential to create a negative sort of first impression if you're totally passionate.:

Speaker 2:

34:13

All right, so let's, uh, let's wrap up this episode with this week's recommendations. What do you got? My,:

Speaker 3:

34:20

this is a weird one. So, uh, so, so dave, Dave Chappelle's the bird and equanimity or whatever to his latest Netflix, what do you call it, stand up, which is fantastic by the way. So this is two recommendations wrapped up in one. He in one of those episodes, he talks about this book, it's called pimp the story of my life by iceberg slim iceberg slim scores, Robert Beck, who is a notorious. Well, he, he ran his own prostitution ring. So, uh, who was a pimp in the seventies. The book itself is fascinating. It's a little racy and it's definitely, you know, makes you think about the objectification of women and all that kind of stuff. But like in as a, you get to kind of go down this rabbit hole of, of 19 seventies culture and in a way that's very honest. And I just thought I'd find the whole thing fascinating. I guess some people might not have the stomach for it. I'm just got to kind of look at it like sociology, you know, investigation and not worry about the sort of, the reality of what you're reading, which is quite, quite dark and quite, you know, quite sort of warning, something like that.:

Speaker 2:

35:21

Well, I'll segue that into mine and it's going to. Obviously you're doing doing this, but um, and this came from Patrick O'shaughnessy, his podcast, which is invest like the best and it's again, we talked about my fascination with investing, but um, so it came from his podcast and he said over and over again and I've really taken it to heart and it's created some kind of interesting perspectives for me. And that is to read and investigate outside of your field. So, um, look into stuff and, and read things or, or, um, talk about, uh, or talk with people that are not operating in your field. So I'm taking cues from the investing community are taking cues from reading. I got a book on my shelf that I'm starting to read just about energy. Like you know, what's, what's the future of energy got super into cryptocurrency.:

Speaker 2:

36:12

Right? And like what that technology is and what the ramifications are, so, so it literally taking something outside of your particular core knowledge base and using it to kind of increase your perspective and do things in a different way. And that's how we got to this podcast actually. I mean, in my particular case it was listening to all these great investing podcasts and saying like, Oh crap, we should do this for marketing and that actually look into the marketing space and there's some good ones for sure. But there's, um, there's certainly not as many quality marketing podcast, especially for this kind of a weird part of the marketing industry. The people that are actually doing real sizable marketing projects is even a smaller number. So the marketing tends to be self help, printer kind of stuff. And so, um, so anyway, that's a, that's mine.:

Speaker 2:

37:08

So read outside of your industry and it could give you a good idea to bring into your particular industry. So with that, let's, uh, let's wrap up, episode three. Thanks Mike for being here. And uh, all you folks that are starting to follow us and tune in and subscribe to us would love loving hearing the feedback and we'll keep trying to improve things and if there's something you want to hear about or you're curious about us and what we do a, leave it in the comments on Itunes, stitcher, or wherever you're downloading us. So until next time, improve your marketing or whatever. So coming up next CDS. We're on three right? Designing for. We are on three. Alright. Welcome to. Sorry, go ahead. You're killing my intro. Seriously. Carol, what do you know we were recording yet. I'm sorry, are you in the right document? I am in the right document. Okay.: